XI
NADEJDA NICOLAIEVNA
I Have long wanted to commence my memoirs. A strange reason is compelling me to take up a pen. Some write their memoirs because there is much in them historically interesting, others because they wish by so doing to live the happy days of their youth once more, and yet others in order to sneer at and traduce persons long since dead, and to justify themselves before long-forgotten accusations. In my case it is not any one of these reasons. I am still young. I have not made history, nor have I seen how it is made. There is no reason for people to criticize me, and I have nothing concerning which I wish to justify myself. Once again to experience happiness? My happiness was so short-lived and its finale so terrible that to recall it does not afford me pleasure . . . no, far from it.
Why, then, does an unknown voice keep whispering of that happiness in my ear? Why, when I awake at night, do familiar scenes and forms pass before me in the darkness? And why, when one pale form appears, does his face blaze, his hands clench, and terror and fury arrest his breathing as on that day when I stood face to face with my mortal enemy?
I cannot rid myself of these recollections, and a strange
thought has come into my head. Perhaps if I commit
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